Which ecommerce platform for my start up?

Im starting up an online poster store and want to choose the best platform from the start. I keep flirting between Shopify and square space and I’m really not sure what do decide and if I’m missing a trick! I would really appreciate advice please.

I’m a graphic designer and will be designing the prints. Some will be personalised too.

I have used magneto in the past to upload products to an online store and have also a bit of knowledge of Wordpress.

I need my products to have different size options where the price can automatically update once selected. I may also add frames or different materials. So through choosing the options the site needs to build the price. I’m not sure if this is quite complex or quite normal?

I also need an option to allow people to upload a file to me which should tag onto the job.

I can probably manage the orders manually initially but eventually would like them to automatically go through to print suppliers so would like to future proof to allowing this to happen.

Long term I want to develop a live preview where my customers can see the artwork live on screen and approve for print.

With some knowledge of WordPress why not consider WooCommerce? There is a large selection of Themes and plugins/extensions that should satisfy your requirements plus a vast community for support. If you choose a hosted self-build solution you are going to be much more restricted in terms of options. OpenCart is another open-source option supported by community with themes and extensions.

Wanted to shift away from Woocommerce myself. Installed Opencart to see how it went, got 30 minutes in and pages wouldn't load and nothing in the error logs. 15 years running web servers and it's the first time I've ever given up on a debug.

Wanted to shift away from Woocommerce myself. Installed Opencart to see how it went, got 30 minutes in and pages wouldn't load and nothing in the error logs. 15 years running web servers and it's the first time I've ever given up on a debug.

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Hmm, that's sounds very unusual. Have you ever set up Magento? What issues did you have with OpenCart? I've never had significant difficulty with an OpenCart install and I've installed it on various flavours of Linux, local host, and Windows Server with IIS. It really has been straight-forward in almost every case.

Magento and WooCommerce will do what you want and both applications are free in their basic forms, you just need hosting for them.

Shopify & Squarespace are also fine if they do what you want but if they don't, you'll have to wait until they decide whether to add your missing features. Magento and Wordpress are portable, you can take them to just about any hosts and you have access to all the data. If in the future you decide to move to another platform from either Shopify or Squarespace, being a hosted service, you don't have such access to the raw data to assist in rebuilding your site elsewhere.

What's the total number of products and their variations you'll be selling and how do you see that number growing in the future?

I would always recommend Wordpress running on WooCommerce. It's a quick deployment, really stable, low cost, plugins for most requirements available both paid and free and it's really popular - meaning you can find relatively low cost help quite easily.

I think for your type of business Squarespace would be a better option. It has a creative community so that it would be perfect for marketing and templates are quite modern and minimalistic. But if you want a kinda traditional type of online store, you can choose Shopify or Magento Community edition for the beginning. The last one has an unlimited ability to customize, and seamless third-party integrations and the latest version has instant purchase ability.

I have used BigCommerce for the past 5 years from startup and have to say it is excellent. Easy to use and really user-friendly. They say that their merchants get 2x the sales of competing platforms which I would agree with from what I have experienced.

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Used Prestashop before which was good at the time and probably much improved since, however I'm now a fan of a Wordpress with a Woocommerce plugin. Additionally I'm impressed with the Divi3 theme as it makes website building easy. The Theme has to be purchased

Well, if you need an idea for a website, I recommend you to contact Optasy Drupal developer. They use Drupal for building websites, and there is a number of advantages. First of all, websites built with Drupal are really functional, SEO-friendly and highly secure. Optasy pays a lot of attention to details and they are always client-oriented. Moreover, Optasy contributes to Drupal developing new custom modules, thus allowing to build unique websites aimed at personal needs. Drupal eCommerce Solution is the best tool for those who want to launch online store. If we take a look at the main features of eCommerce, it's advantages seem to be obvious: